Ed,
Rob was using the word correctly, but you have to have the secret decoder
ring. :)
In the signal processing community, the word "decimate" is extremely common
and has come to mean retaining every M-th sample of a sequence:
y[n] = x[M*n]
Another word, "downsampling", is sometimes used for this operation as well
(although some definitions for "downsampling" require that the sequence be
lowpass filtered first).
I guess the word "decimate" can be considered technical jargon which, as you
pointed out, has strayed slightly from its original meaning.
- Jordan
"Ed McBride" <emcbride at wybron.com> wrote in message
news:84jorg$e12 at smc.vnet.net...
>
>
> > "Rob Peterson" <rob-piovere at swbell.net> wrote in message
> > news:849j3v$pgm at smc.vnet.net...
> > > I start with a list y that I need to decimate (sp?). I've looked thru
> > > the book and the only list function I can find to dump list elements
> > > is the Drop[] function. But, the best I can do is get rid of half of
> > > the elements at a time. I want to decimate this list by 16, ie I want
> > > to dump 15 of every 16 entries.
>
> Don't mean to be anal-retentive, but the English language is something I
> care about. Decimate comes from the Latin, meaning literally to kill
> every tenth man, a punishment meted out to Roman Legions that showed
> cowardice, or something else regarded as unacceptable. Yes, things were
> definitely tough back then, but the Romans did conquer most of the known
> world, so... Anyway, the word can be used loosely to mean inflict heavy
> casualties, but I think "killing" 15 out of 16 is a bit too much. Ed
> McBride, P.E.
>